You say this is unprecedented times. But correct me if I am wrong. The government has always given non government institutions access to government facilities and data. Some are even in charge or running infrastructure and providing software.
Lots of contractor in the past seem to have had varying levels of access to government databases and infrastructure to fulfill their contracted duty.
The only major difference I see here is the entity and connection to specific people and the openness about who.
Just recently there was a story, I think here on hacker news, where somebody was doing some work for a government agency and built into the bill granting the contract were provisions to conceal the entity doing the work and bared government officials to comment on the work being done.
So I guess if we are in interesting times it’s that we are an ally being let know?